25 Jun More on Patriotic Internationalism
Brian Tamanaha over at Balkinization has responded to my post from last week, clarifying just why he thinks patriotism is so dangerous. His essential argument is that patriotism is not virtuous because politicians can abuse it in their desire for an inexorable march to war. He argues that “[s]ome good follows from patriotism, of course, but the bad that follows is supremely dangerous. Those of you who think my assertion—I don’t love my country (there, I said it again)—is scandalous, before you tell me about the error and ingratitude of my ways, please reflect just for a moment on what patriotism is, on how it works purely at the level of emotion, and consider its abuses.”
The problem with Tamanaha’s analysis is that it simplistically equates patriotism with militarism. Obviously they are not remotely the same. One can find patriotism in virtually every country on earth, most of which do not have militaristic tendencies. (Cue for Kevin to talk about Kiwi patriotism for New Zealand and the All Blacks). Patriotism is an ingredient in militarism, but from this it does not follow that patriotism therefore lacks virtue. All militarists are patriotic, but not all patriots are militarists.
My statement that “your country loves you” is nothing more than a simple statement that our government is one “of the people, by the people, and for the people.” The fundamental posture of a government official is that of service to his or her constituents. In short, people serving other people. Many public servants may do this to remain in office, but just as many may want to do right for their own people. Either way, the result is service. Thus every decision a democratically-elected representative should make is with regard to how it benefits the citizenry. To that extent you, the citizen, are the state’s reason for being.
Nor does patriotism mean that one necessarily is a nationalist. One can quite easily be a patriotic internationalist. Indeed, millions of people in any number of countries display profound tendencies toward patriotism, but are deeply integrated into the fabric of international life.
What I am suggesting is nothing new or profound. Over 85 years ago one of the leaders of the universal peace movement, the Norwegian Christian Lange, spoke in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture of 1921 on the appropriate link between patriotism and internationalism:
Today we stand on a bridge leading from the territorial state to the world community….The territorial state is such an ancient form of society – here in Europe it dates back thousands of years – that it is now protected by the sanctity of age and the glory of tradition. A strong religious feeling mingles with the respect and the devotion to the fatherland. The territorial state today is always ready to don its “national” costume: it sees in national feeling its ideal foundation…. It is characteristic that this should take place just when it is becoming more and more clear to all who think about the matter, that technically and economically we have left the territorial state behind us…. The consequences and applications of the theory of internationalism, as it is here defined and supported, are not difficult to establish. They appear in the economic and political fields. But their fundamental importance in the purely spiritual fields is limited.
Economically, the consequences of internationalism are obvious and have already been hinted at. The main concept is that of an international solidarity expressed in practice through worldwide division of labor: free trade is the principal point in the program of internationalism…. It is necessary to linger in a little more detail over the political consequences of internationalism. Here the task is to devise patterns of organization for the concept of world unity and cooperation between the nations. That, in a word, is the great and dominating political task of our time….
“[N]ationality” is nothing if not a spiritual phenomenon…. A nation is a part of mankind which expresses the will to be a nation; a nation’s existence is a continuous, daily plebiscite – un plébiscite de tous les jours…. Internationalism will not eradicate these spiritual distinctions. On the contrary, it will develop national characteristics, protect their existence, and free their development. Internationalism differs in this from cosmopolitanism. The latter wants to wipe out or at least to minimize all national characteristics, even in the spiritual field. Internationalism on the other hand admits that spiritual achievements have their roots deep in national life; from this national consciousness art and literature derive their character and strength and on it even many of the humanistic sciences are firmly based.
Diversity in national intellectual development, distinctive character in local self-government – both of these are wholly compatible with internationalism, which indeed is really a prerequisite for a rich and varied development. It is the political authority over common interests that internationalism wants to transfer to a common management….
Internationalism is a community theory of society which is founded on economic, spiritual, and biological facts. It maintains that respect for a healthy development of human society and of world civilization requires that mankind be organized internationally. Nationalities should form the constitutive links in a great world alliance, and must be guaranteed an independent life in the realm of the spiritual and for locally delimited tasks, while economic and political objectives must be guided internationally in a spirit of peaceful cooperation for the promotion of mankind’s common interests.
Thus, I have no cognitive dissonance whatsoever with the concept of being a patriotic internationalist. My nationality is a wonderful part of self-identification. I would think that patriotism is a part of self-identification for many if not most people. It is why we cheer the way we do when watching the World Cup or the Olympics. It is one of the reasons that an Austrian celebrates Mozart, an Englishman celebrates Shakespeare, or an American celebrates Armstrong (Neil or Louis). But that does not deny the important role we recognize for close international cooperation and integration between and among countries to address common problems and shared interests.
Given a choice, I don’t find it difficult to warmly embrace the choice of an optimistic patriotic internationalism over the option of a cynical unpatriotic cosmopolitanism.
I am utterly out of my depth here, but I would nevertheless hazard a few remarks: Christian Lange’s speech on the links between patriotism and internationalism, like the whole topic, reminds me of a rather impressive speech President Vaclav Havel gave a few years ago in the German Bundestag (the lower house of parliament). This addressed the notion of patriotism, against the background of the German Vertriebenen (those displaced under the Benes Decrees at the end of WW II) campaigning for an apology and possibly measures of restitution from the Czech Republic. His argument was, if memory serves, that we should regard our own national identity as the basis or platform from which to look at the world. Nationality, then, would have no element of divisiveness, but give us our perspective on (much of) the world. Another concept of patriotism is that of constitutional patriotism (Verfassungspatriotismus). This seems to be a fairly German concept (so much so, in fact, that the wikipedia entry on the concept only exists in German); it goes back to philosophers like Jürgen Habermas, and was endorsed, I think, by the former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. The idea of Verfassungspatriotismus holds that the modern democratic State… Read more »
“Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and as irrational as a headless hen.” ~ Ambrose Bierce “Patriotism: combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.” ~ Ambrose Bierce “God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.” ~ Louis Buñuel “Patriotism is the religion of hell.” ~ James Branch Cabell “Never was patriot yet, but was a fool.” ~ John Dryden “Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism — how passionately I hate them!” ~ Albert Einstein “I find it difficult to believe that I belong to such an idiotic, rotten species — the species that actually boasts of its freedom of will, heroism on command, senseless violence, and all of the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism.” ~ Albert Einstein “When a whole nation is roaring Patriotism at the top of its voice, I am fain to explore the cleanness of its hands and the purity of its heart.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, 1824 “Patriotism ruins history.” ~ Goethe “When a whole nation is roaring… Read more »